Industrial design often borrows from biology, but does that mean tasting spoons with working tastebuds? How about tongs that grab with humanoid teeth, or a pepper mill that sniffs your food and dispenses just the right amount of seasoning? Christine Chin's Sentient Kitchen imagines cooking utensils with both the form and function of human body parts. They'll be a huge help come dinnertime—if you can get past the way they look.

Chin created this conceptual series to explore the intersection between biology and technology, creating big-eared teacups meant to be good listeners, masticating meat grinders, and salt shakers that scurry around on ten toes. But this isn't some slickly produced bioengineering; in Chin's anatomically inspired kitchen of the future, we'll have to deal with all of the human body's aesthetic imperfections, all the hair and moles and, one imagines, ingrown toenails.

You can see the rest of the series, as well as videos of the tools in action, at Chin's website. Just be aware that it gets nipply over there.